


Dreaming Down Deep

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dreams, Fjord is Weird But So Is Everyone Else, Fjord's Patron - Freeform, Gen, Has Anyone Else Noticed No One Including Fjord Seems To Know What A Warlock Is?, I did, Just Because It's A Dream Doesn't Mean It Can't Hurt You, Lucid Dreaming, Now Starring The Rest Of The Mighty Nein, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-10 08:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15945332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Caduceus is used to strange dreams, but some dreams are stranger than others....Or:What if Caduceus met Fjord's patron and was just both mildly clueless and very polite about the whole thing?





	1. Chapter 1

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth….

—Alfred Tennyson, _The Kraken_.

  


_Caduceus walks through a night sky filled with stars, their light silver and cool, nearly close enough to touch. He’s dreaming, he knows that, but that doesn’t diminish his enjoyment of the scenery. The stars are beautiful, and the way they shine reminds him of the way the sunlight had glimmered across the sea earlier that day._

_The ocean water is cool underneath his bare feet as Caduceus walks on the waves, the stars reflecting off the water, mirroring the sky above. Caduceus looks across the ocean, watching the starlight dance across the surface, then looks deeper, past his own feet. There is a light down in the depths. It’s not the sparkling silver of starlight, or the gentle white glow of the world’s twin moons. It’s a low, yellow light, and even though it reminds Caduceus of firelight it does not look like a warm light, it’s not a light that means safety and companionship. It’s more like the eye-shine of a predator in the dark, but magnified by a hundred, a thousand._

_Water surrounding him, water everywhere, salt in his mouth and water in his lungs and for an instant Caduceus chokes on it because that’s how water works before he remembers he’s dreaming and the water changes. It feels heavy and thick and warm, like trying to breathe air in the summer when the humidity is high, like the water is trying to resist being changed, but it works. The resistance is a sign that this might not_ **_just_ ** _be a dream, that there may be some flavor of reality mixed in, and that’s interesting. Dangerous, but interesting._

_Caduceus swims down towards the light, down into the depths. The deeper he goes the colder it gets, the harder it is to breathe. He should probably wake himself up, he’s good at that, but he has the sense that there’s something he’s supposed to see here. Things swim in the shadows around him, things with many eyes and many mouths filled with rows of sharp teeth. He looks at them with calm interest, wondering if they are reflections of creatures that live in the waking world or if they only live here, in this ocean, in this dream. They mostly look like fish. Mostly._

_Without warning his feet are on the sandy ocean floor and the light is in front of him, bright but somehow not blinding, even though he’s looking directly at the source of the light, looking directly into an eye much bigger than he is tall. He can’t see anything past the eye, can’t make out what sort of body it might be attached to, if indeed the eye is attached to anything._

_“Hello,” Caduceus says, the word leaving him in a stream of bubbles. “My name’s Caduceus, Caduceus Clay. Do you have something people call you?”_

_The black slit in the yellow eye narrows at him in what Caduceus thinks might be confusion. Maybe it doesn’t understand Common, or maybe it’s just shy._

_“Are you a sea monster? Miss Jester said there were sea monsters in the ocean, with tentacles. I’ve never seen a sea monster before, but I’ve never seen the sea before either. There are a lot of things I haven’t seen.”_

**_POTENTIAL_ **

_The word rumbles in the water and in the salt of Caduceus’s blood and reaches his brain while bypassing his ears entirely. It’s an unpleasant sensation to be sure, not at all like when the Wildmother speaks to him. Caduceus wonders just what kind of entity he’s dealing with here._

_“Are you asking if I have potential?” Caduceus asks the eye. It had been hard to tell, but the word had sounded like a question to him. “I believe that everything living has the potential to grow into something useful and beautiful. Sometimes they need help to do that, whether it’s flowers or people, but the potential is there.”_

_The eye’s pupil narrows further, and there is a long silence._

**_OFFER_ **

_The voice sounds hesitant, unsure._

_“Do you want me to offer you something? Or are you offering_ **_me_ ** _something?” This would be easier if the eye, if that’s what is speaking to him, could speak in more than one word phrases, but it probably can’t be helped._

_A sword appears in front of Caduceus then, silver as starlight with a sharp, hooked blade that reminds him of a shrike’s bill. There are barnacles encrusting the hilt. Caduceus had only learned about barnacles that morning, when he had been at the beach with his friends._

_“No thank you,” Caduceus says politely. “It’s a very nice sword though. I have a staff with me usually, but not right now. It’s just as well, the beetles wouldn’t take kindly to the water I think.”_

**_POWER_ **

_The word, full of annoyance and frustration,slams into Caduceus’s mind with enough force that he winces as pain blooms behind his eyes like a flower and a thin trickle of blood trails through the water in front of him, probably from his nose. He frowns and stands up a little straighter._

_“That was uncalled for,” Caduceus says softly, his tone laced with disappointment. “I’ve been nothing but polite to you. I’m not sure what you are, if you’re a god or an ancient spirit or something older than time or stars, but that is no excuse for bad manners.”_

_Laughter all around him now as the water grows even colder, as the creatures in the shadows draw even closer, eyes shining, mouths open. Caduceus has lived long enough to know that not all dreams are safe, that just because something is a dream doesn’t mean it can’t also be real, and he doesn’t want to find out the hard way that those dream teeth can cause him damage in the waking world. He whispers a prayer to the Wildmother as tentacles emerge from the dark—_

Caduceus opens his eyes to darkness all around him, the mundane darkness of a room and nothing more. He takes a few deep breaths, enjoying the feeling of proper air in his lungs before sitting up in bed and reaching for his staff. The purple crystal flares as his hand meets the wood, a soft lavender light filling the room.

“Well. That was certainly exciting.” Caduceus tastes salt in his mouth when he speaks, iron trickling down the back of his throat, and when he touches his nose his fingertips come away spotted with blood. The headache has followed him through his dream as well, a dull, throbbing ache.

There’s a familiar tickling sensation on the hand holding the staff, and Caduceus smiles at the large green beetle that has crawled out of the wood and onto one of his fingers.

“I’m fine,” Caduceus says with a gentle smile. “Thank you. Go back to sleep.”

The beetle clicks its mandibles and turns around, crawling back up into the staff, which Caduceus leans up against the nightstand, crystal still glowing gently. He closes his eyes, not to go back to sleep, but because he’s trying to concentrate. There was something familiar about the eye, now that he thought about it, about how the entity had offered him a strange sword. Why did it make him think of Fjord—?

Caduceus’s headache flares and he winces, rubbing at his temples before climbing out of bed and rummaging through his pack, looking for a tea that was good for headaches and that would help him fall back asleep. Later, as he waits for his tea to cool, he tries to remember what he had been thinking about and fails. That happens sometimes, and he doesn’t let it worry him. Instead he just sips his tea and stands by the window, listening to the sound of the ocean and looking at the starlight shining across the water.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Caduceus was dreaming Fjord's dream, it only makes sense that the reverse was also true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wasn't *originally* planning on a second chapter, but enough people seemed interested that I gave it a shot!

_Fjord sits on the beach, just close enough to the water that his bare feet are occasionally brushed by the very edge of a wave. The sun is setting, painting the sky and the water orange and pink and gold. He can hear seagulls crying in the distance, and there are cormorants diving for fish and standing on rocks, wings spread out so they can dry. It’s a perfect day. Nearly._

_The falchion appears in his hand, golden and shining in the setting sun, the blade not nearly as bright or as curved as Molly’s smile. “I’m sorry you weren’t here to see this,” Fjord says softly at the sword, at the person it makes him think of. “You would have loved it.”_

_“You carry him with you still,” says the woman next to Fjord. He hadn’t heard her come up and sit beside him, but her voice and her presence doesn’t surprise him at all somehow. Her voice is warm sun and the sound of the waves, but there is rain and wind underneath it all. “He is of the earth now, and he is in your heart. He has never left you.”_

_It’s almost a comfort. Later, maybe, those words will be more of a balm to him and not salt in a wound that’s still fresh and raw. He doesn’t argue the point though. It’s too fine a day to argue. Instead he sighs and dismisses the blade, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring out at the ocean._

_“This is nice,” Fjord says._

_“It is,” the woman replies. “You are not the one I was expecting to see here.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Fjord says contritely. “I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”_

_“It is fine,” the woman says. “The ocean of dreams is full of strange currents. He will find his way back to me.”_

_Fjord watches the sand pipers chase the tide, smiling as they scurry away from the incoming waves. “So this is a dream then. My dreams of the sea aren’t normally so pleasant.”_

_“This was not meant to be your dream,” the woman says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it. Your dreams of the deep and the dark and the one who waits will keep for another night.”_

_“How do you—“ Fjord looks at the woman next to him then, and for an instant she is all he can see, filling his vision like the sea filling the horizon. Her skin is the green of new grass, wreathed entirely in vines of ivy and honeysuckle, her hair long and brown as the earth, and like the earth, flowers grew from it in a riot of colors. Her face looks young, but her eyes, for the brief second before he turns his face away, are ancient and fathomless. He had seen her carved on figureheads, had left offerings at her temples in every port town along with the rest of the ship’s crew to pray for a safe return, had heard the sailors on his last voyage call out to her during the storm._

_“All sailors dream of drowning,” says the Wildmother. “But you dream of something both old and new. Something I do not have a name for.”_

_“I thought gods knew everything,” Fjord says before he can stop himself. He wonders if the others will find him dead in his bed come morning, or turned into a writhing mess of eels for his insolence._

_“We did, once,” the Wildmother says, and her tone is winter wind blowing through bare branches. “But we left you mortals to your realm long ago, and there are things even beyond our ken that have appeared in our absence.”_

_It was a disquieting thought, that there were things out there that even the gods didn’t know about._

_“Your mortal friends might have a name for the thing that haunts your dreams, that speaks to you in quiet moments.”_

_Fjord finds himself shaking his head almost frantically. “I—I can’t tell them about that. I—“ and he shuts his mouth, worrying at his lip with his growing tusks. There are things he can’t say, not even to gods, not even in dreams. About how his whole life has been about trying to fit in, about being what other people wanted, what other people needed, about pulling out his tusks to appear less threatening, about changing his voice to sound more friendly, about working twice as hard in the desperate hope that people would keep wanting to have him around. He can’t say that he nearly cried the first time he changed his own reflection in the mirror using magic. He can’t tell her about how surprised he had been when the Mighty Nein had come to free him when he had been kidnapped, about how some part of him had been sure that they would leave him behind, is still afraid that they might abandon him if his issues outweigh his usefulness to the group. Even now, when they had been more than willing to come down to the coast with him, he still worries._

_“You are afraid that if you get in over your head and you reach out, that no one will be there to pull you up. But if you don’t reach out, then no one will know that you are struggling.” Her hand touches his cheek, guides his gaze to hers. “It is always better to reach out then to slip silently beneath the waves.”_

Fjord opens his eyes to his bedroom at the Lavish Chateau, and for a moment he just lays there, listening to the sound of gulls crying outside the window, trying to recall what he had been dreaming about. The beach… sunset… someone offering him advice? He remembers eyes that were the bottomless green-black of the ocean depths and—

Fjord’s stomach growls, distracting him from his thoughts. He realizes he can smell bacon and coffee and fresh bread and he swings himself out of bed, feeling well rested and relaxed for the first time in what felt like an age, even though he had been unused to sleeping in a bed so soft it seems to have done well by him. He dresses for the day and heads down the hallway, following the smell of food and the voices of his friends.

Caleb looks up from his book and his breakfast the instant Fjord enters the room where everyone is having breakfast, the wizard tensing for a second and then seeming to relax when he realizes it’s only Fjord and not some unknown threat. “Ah, Fjord, good morning. You look like you slept well.”

“So do you,” Fjord says, because it’s true, Caleb looks well rested for a change. “Sea air and soft beds seem to agree with you.”

Caleb rubs the back of his neck and avoids Fjord’s eyes, a flush creeping across his face. “Well, it’s good to enjoy nice things every once in awhile.”

“No shame in that,” Fjord says, unsure as to why Caleb is blushing. Instead of pondering that, his eyes sweep the rest of the table. Nott seems to be taking advantage of the fine food and is demolishing a plate of at least four different breakfast meats. Beau gives him a sleepy half-wave and a grunt of acknowledgment, slow to wake in the morning as usual. Jester is bent over her sketchbook, holding some sort of decadent looking chocolate pastry in one hand while sketching with the other.

“Morning, Jester,” Fjord says. “What’cha working on?”

“Caduceus had a really weird dream last night,” Jester says, dipping her pen in a bottle of yellow ink.

Fjord’s eyes flick over to the firbolg, who is nursing both a cup of tea and a headache by the look of it. “Weird how?”

“I wouldn’t say weird,” Caduceus says, taking a sip of his tea. “I’m used to dreams that aren’t just dreams.”

“Fjord has weird dreams too sometimes,” Jester says as she draws. “And he coughs up seawater.“

“Jester, that was one time. A month ago.” One time in front them anyway, and not counting the time he had woken up with blood in his mouth after the dream about swallowing the sword, and also not counting, well, whatever had happened to him the night of the storm, when his boat sank. He feels unease flicker up his spine, chasing away some of his good mood. “That’s hardly—“

Fjord stops speaking. Jester had moved her arm, and now Fjord can see what she had been drawing. The yellow eye takes up nearly the whole page, and silhouetted against it, so small in comparison, is Caduceus and a sword, something with a wicked and dangerous curve to the blade.

“Fjord?” Jester’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “Fjord, are you okay?”

Darkness all around him, the room falling away. All he can see is the drawing, the eye glaring up at him from the page.

“You’ve seen it too,” Fjord hears himself say, and it’s as if the words have taken the last of his air with him, like he’s back underwater, back in the dark and the cold with bubbles leading nowhere and he’s drowning…

Something washes over him, chases away the cold and leaves warmth in its place. Fjord blinks, the room coming back into focus, and everyone is staring at him, Caleb half risen from his seat and Caduceus with an arm outstretched.

“I’m sorry!” Jester says as she closes the sketchbook with a sudden hard snap. “I didn’t know—“

“It’s fine,” Fjord says calmly. “I’m okay.” He sits down at the table next to Jester and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“You might feel differently once the spell wears off,” Caduceus says.

“You were hyperventilating,” Caleb says, sitting back down.

Fjord remembers the feeling of not getting enough air, the spell only calmed his emotions, didn’t alter his memories. For a moment he thinks about pretending that he doesn’t know why he reacted to the drawing that way, that he doesn’t remember what he said when he saw it. He looks around the table at all of them, at their concerned faces.

_It is always better to reach out then to slip silently beneath the waves._

Fjord takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I—I have something to tell you.”

The spell wears off just after Fjord starts his story, so it’s with hands clenched into fists on the table and a voice that shakes that he tells his story, tells them about the dreams and the dark, the swords and the blood and the night of the wreck where, with salt water burning in his lungs, he had said yes to something he didn’t have a name for and a bargain he didn’t know the details of.

“I thought it was just dreams,” Fjord says, looking down at the table. “Or maybe I just was hoping that was all they were. I mean, who has dreams about something like that and wakes up with magic?”

“Warlocks,” Jester says, as if it’s obvious.

“What?” Fjord asks, his question echoed by Beau and Nott. Caduceus says nothing, just observes everything with a quiet intensity. Caleb whispers something that Fjord can’t quite make out, but almost sounds like, “that makes sense.”

“It’s like in this book I was reading,” Jester says, her eyes shining. “It was a story about about this elven princess who fell in love with a paladin of Sarenrae _and_ with a warlock whose patron was an archfey and her father said she could only marry one of them, but she couldn’t decide between them, and then it turned out the paladin and the warlock loved the princess _and_ each other, so they all ran off to a country without such strict marriage laws and got married and had adventures and had a lot of sex. Well, they had sex before they were married too, but like, even more sex.”

“Aww, that’s nice,” Caduceus says. “Everyone got to be together. I love happy endings.”

“Okay, that’s great,” Beau says, and Fjord can see she is trying very hard not to roll her eyes. “But not actually informative.”

“It’s….” Jester taps her lip in thought. “It’s like clerics, kinda, but instead of a god or whatever saying, ‘Oh hey worship me and I’ll give you awesome powers,’ it’s like an archfey or Fjord’s glowing eyeball thing or something with a bunch of tentacles going, ‘oh hey, here’s some awesome powers, do stuff for me.’ At least I think it’s like that. The book I was reading wasn’t, you know, educational smut.”

“Edubational,” Beau says with a snicker.

“You should be careful when we get back to the Empire,” Caleb says softly, and blushes when everyone turns to look at him. “They um, probably don’t like warlocks there.”

“How do you—?” Fjord starts to ask, but Beau cuts in.

“Well it makes sense,” Beau says quickly. “Shit, the Empire only approves of worshipping a handful of gods, they probably wouldn’t be cool with people getting magic from underwater glowing eyeballs either.”

“Probably not,” Caleb says, and there’s something about the way he says it that makes Fjord think Caleb knows more than he is telling, because Caleb has that look in his eye, that far away look he gets sometimes in battle. Fjord wants to ask him about that later, alone, so instead he asks the other question preying on his mind.

“You guys don’t think it’s, you know, weird? Or evil?”

Everyone looks at him, but it’s Caduceus who speaks first, gaze fixed on him. “You know, you’ll feel better if you ask the question you really want to ask.”

Fjord keeps forgetting, for all of Caduceus sleepy-eyed expressions of mild wonder at the world, that he can also be an eerily perceptive bastard. “Fine,” Fjord snaps, anxiety making his voice hard and harsh, but it’s too late to take the word back now. “Do any of y’all think _I’m_ weird or evil?”

Beau laughs, an amused and slightly bitter sound. “Fjord, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re all weird. Like, all of us sitting here. And what the hell, man? Of course you’re not evil.”

“So you get your powers from some unspeakable glowing eye in the ocean,” Nott says. “So what?” It nearly sounds like sarcasm, but there’s something in Nott’s expression that seems sincere. “You use them to fight things that are trying to kill us, and that’s not bad.”

“What a person does with power says a lot,” Caduceus agrees with a nod.

“If you’re weird, then I like weird,” Jester says, bumping her shoulder with his. “And you’re about as evil as this pastry I’m holding. And as tasty looking.”

Fjord blushes and looks away, which coincidentally means he ends up looking at Caleb, who looks him right in the eye, something that Fjord knows is hard for the wizard to do.

“Beau is not wrong. We are all weird. I am beginning to think that maybe life is about finding people whose particular weirdness gets along with your own personal weirdness. And you are not evil.” Caleb breaks eye contact and looks down at his hands. “I have…known evil. You are not that.”

Fjord adds another question to the ‘list of things to ask Caleb in private, possibly involving alcohol,’ and then lets it go for the moment. “Thank you. All of you.”

“No problem,” Beau says. “You should talk about shit that’s bothering you more often. You’d feel better.”

“Oh like you do?” Nott says, and then the two of them are having a nearly friendly argument, and Jester is chiming in while waving her pastry around for emphasis and scattering crumbs, and Caleb has gone back to his book and it’s all so _normal._ They’re all going to have to discuss what they’re going to do today, but right now he just breathes a shaky sigh of relief and piles eggs and bacon and potatoes onto his plate.

Fjord’s about halfway through eating when Caduceus slides onto the bench next to him, handing him a mug of tea. Fjord can tell by the weird leather and earth smell of it that it’s the same tea he’s grown used to drinking in the morning, the kind that makes him feel more alert and ready to handle whatever the day has in store. He has a feeling he’s going to need it. “Thanks. And um…” Fjord rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry for snapping at you earlier.”

“It’s all right,” Caduceus says gently. “It all worked out. Feeling better?”

“Yeah, actually.” Fjord takes a swig of his tea. “I just realized, this all started because you were dreaming about my….my patron, but I didn’t even get to hear about your dream. He didn’t hurt you, did he? Try to drown you? You didn’t wake up coughing up seawater?”

“He was very loud and rather impolite, and I woke up with a headache and a nosebleed, but I’ve had worse from dreams,” Caduceus says matter of factly.

“I’m sorry,” Fjord says, and is surprised when Caduceus puts a hand on his arm, his gaze as serious as the stare of a corpse.

“Don’t apologize for him. What he does has nothing to do with you.” Caduceus shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re evil, Fjord, but I don’t think he’s good either.”

“Yeah,” Fjord says softly. “Can’t say I disagree with you there.” Fjord grips the mug of tea tightly. “Last night I had a dream about the beach and I was talking to someone and it was so nice to be dreaming about being near the water and not being afraid of what was under it. I….” Fjord trails off, because looking at Caduceus he suddenly remembers who he had been talking to in his dream.

“Fjord?” Caduceus’s eyes have gone from serious to concerned.

“I think I had a dream about the Wildmother last night,” Fjord says, and watches Caduceus’s serious expression slowly blossom into a smile.

“That’s great,” Caduceus says earnestly. “I’d love to hear about it, unless it’s private, of course. I’d understand if—“

“I’d be happy to tell you,” Fjord says. “She gave me some very good advice.”

Fjord will leave an offering at the Mother’s Lighthouse later, flowers and fruit and gold. Even later than that, the next time he wakes up from a dream shaking and with the taste of salt on his tongue, he’ll remember the beach and the goddess with flowers in her hair and eyes as deep as the ocean, and he’ll find some measure of comfort. But for now he is simply content to be surrounded by people who haven’t rejected him for who he is, and to finally have a name for what he is and what he dreams about down in the depths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out of the fact that no one on the show, including Fjord, seems to know what a warlock is. I thought it only made sense that the Empire Did Not Approve of Warlocks and possibly that they were just rare or not talked about as much in general in the world, so it'd make sense that Fjord didn't have any idea that was what he was.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that at the same time that this is going on, Fjord is having some nice and very soothing dream involving the Wildmother. Boy needs a vacation from glowing eyes and swallowing swords. 
> 
> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


End file.
